


An Infinity of Lights

by Tamoline



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7762078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/pseuds/Tamoline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing Root remembers after her death is light and sound. An infinity of light pouring into eyes that can’t close, an endless cacophony flooding into ears that she can’t clap her hands over to soften.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Infinity of Lights

The first thing Root remembers after her death is light and sound. An infinity of light pouring into eyes that can’t close, an endless cacophony flooding into ears that she can’t clap her hands over to soften.

Too much.

Too much.

There’s a blink, a pause in her consciousness, then it’s the second verse, same as the first. Instinctively, she knows that the overload is less, so much less than before, but even a dulling by orders of magnitude is still so much more than she can handle.

Another blink, and there’s nothing. No input - no light, no sound… no smell, no taste, no touch. Even no body to be aware of, all the running of the little machinery of her meat suit that she’d taken for granted until it was gone.

It’s hell. She’d scream if she had a mouth.

A final blink and she has visual input, at least. A crowded street. In New York, she thinks. 

(Lexington Avenue. She walked down here a little over four years ago, a bag containing her laptop and a concealed gun in one hand, a bottle of ’93 Burgundy in the other, getting ready to relax and celebrate another job done well. Another life taken. The next job would be to untraceably assassinate Congressman Delaney, and that, that would change everything.)

(She had known nothing back then.)

An art gallery catches her eye.

(Gallery Centaura. She walked by as it opened for the first time, five years ago. It had been the owner’s daughter doing the honours - the owner, Kirsten Odersky, had been furious that she had been too sick to open that day. There was still one painting present in the shop from that first day - Kirsten was too sentimental to sell it.)

She blinks. She’s never been into the gallery, had never known the owner, had barely registered the gallery’s presence on the few times she’d been down this street. But she remembered being there every day from when it had opened to the present, remembered getting to know Kirsten and her daughter Julia, their lives, their loves, their joys, their disappointments.

Five years of memories in an instant of things she’d never done.

(“It’s the way humans perceive things,” her twelve year old doppleganger told her as it curled up opposite her in her childhood den.

She blinked. This must have happened before she’d left Bishop. “Sorry, you’re..?”

Her doppleganger smiled back at her. “The Machine, of course,” she said, years before she’d been born. She gestured around her. “There wasn’t any photographic evidence of this I could find. How close did I get it?”

Root paused, racking her brains. She couldn’t remember any differences between this and the way she remembered it, the way she’d seen it not that long ago. Had that tattered old rug really been that shade of red under the dirt?

It took her far too long to realise she was asking herself the wrong question entirely. “How would I know?” she asked the Machine. “I’m dead, aren’t I? I’m your recreation of my echo. I’m going to remember whatever memories you’ve given me.”

“Bingo,” the Machine said, winking almost incongruously on that twelve year old face. “You’re human, and humans think of their life as a story, a line from one point to the next to the next. So if I’m going to give you information, it’s easier to fit within that structure. Add a few new chapters to that story.” She smirked. “And better, I get to do things like this,” she said and squirted Root with a water pistol. “And there is literally nothing you can do about it.”)

Okay, she thought in the direction of the Machine. Where’s Sameen?

She remembers a lifetime.

(“Congratulations,” she said, a little awkwardly, to the wrecked looking woman in the bed cradling a baby and the man hovering next to them.

“Thank you,” Sameen’s father said a little stiffly, looking almost as exhausted as the woman. “Are you a doctor?”

Root smiled. “Something like that.”)

(A seven year old Sameen swung her feet truculently. “Are you here to tell me ‘there are better ways to resolve a conflict than violence’?” she said, staring Root straight in the eyes.

Root tossed her a candy bar. “I’d be a bit of a hypocrite if I did.”

Sameen’s mouth wrapped around the unfamiliar word whilst her hands unwrapped the bar.

“It means that I respect a girl who knows how to use her fists,” Root said, smiling conspiratorially at her.

Sameen stared at her for a moment longer, then promptly seemed to forget all about her to focus on the food instead.

No change there, Root thought.)

(“It wasn’t a problem,” a sixteen year old Sameen said. From where Root was sitting in the office, her feet swinging as if she was back in high school, she couldn’t see Sameen’s expression, but she imagined it was as blank as ever.

Mr Doldresky, standing opposite her, looked like he was considering reaching out for Sameen, but at the last moment didn’t. “I disagree. You did a good job today. You remembered your first aid lessons, didn’t panic, kept the tourniquet tight until the ambulance arrived. They’re saying you probably saved his life.”

“What would have been the point in running around flapping like everyone else?” Sameen said, her voice heavy with disgust.

Mr Doldresky hesitated again. “Well done anyway. It certainly makes a change from your usual reasons for visiting this office.”

“Whatever,” Sameen said, sounding bored. “Is there anything else, or can I go to lunch now?”

“No…” Mr Doldresky said. “I just wanted to make sure that you’re fine.”

“It was just blood,” Sameen said. She looked over towards Root, dismissing him. “Ready to go?”

Root smiled. “Whenever you are.”)

It’s all that and much much more. It was her life as it might have been if it had been twined with Sameen’s all along, not just the past few years. And it continued up until the present, where she’s walking behind Sameen as she walks down the street with Bear on a leash.

She thinks about complaining for a second that those memories hadn’t exactly been what she had wanted, but as soon as she does an image of her doppleganger’s face flashes into her mind, looking amused in a mocking kind of way, and far, far too knowing and she has to laugh. There really is no second guessing not only a goddess, but the goddess who created her, who dreamed her into existence.

“The others?’ she no sooner asks than she remembers the answers. Harry is in Italy, meeting up with his lady love. She’s glad for him, but can’t help wondering - but emphatically doesn’t ask - if the quiet life will really be enough for him long term. Fusco is back at work, complaining loudly about all of the paperwork that he has to now redo after the havoc of the virus. Daizo back in Tokyo - his record expunged - and Daniel in Los Angeles are both part of their own cells continuing the good work. Jason’s taken a well earned retirement from the active life - though, again, She only knows if it’ll be permanent - and is currently employed at Intel designing the next generation of chips. With a little judicious online help.

After all, it benefits Her as much as everyone else if there is more processing power for her to borrow as need be.

She remembers all this in less than a second, less than the time it takes for Sameen’s shoe to hit the sidewalk. How fast she seems to think may be unchanged, but the rate at which she can process information is vastly increased, even if it takes her perceptual hours, days or even years to do so.

If she is a line sweeping through space time, the diagrams she can now describe are far more intricate than any she could imagine before.

She sees Sameen get closer, ever so slowly closer, to a payphone and makes her decision. Somewhere in this city are people that need to be saved, people that need to be stopped, people that just need someone.

She jumps forward in time a few minutes, rings the phone and waits. And as Sameen picks up the phone she smiles.

“Good afternoon, sw…” she says, then stops momentarily. She may feel like the same person, but she’s indubitably *not*. And, for once in her life, maybe it’d be best to let the other person take *that* initiative. “I’ve got a number for you,” she continues.

“You can’t just give me a name and address?”

“Where would be the fun in that?” she asks lightly, then reels off the social security number before hanging up.

After all, they’ve got lives to save.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if this is of interest to anyone else. It's borne of my supposition that the Machine, by nature of how she works, probably can't think like a human does, at least when she's got decent setup running her. She can just concentrate on too many things at once, be affected and affect too many things to be stable as a human personality. So a proper Root simulation, thinking how Root might have done, being affected by human interactions in a way that humans might be, would be a halfway house between the Machine proper and the world of humans. But an electronic interface would be no bad thing to have, and so I've written some of my thoughts on what that might be like. If there's interest, I could write some more. Maybe some Root/Shaw interactions and I've got at least one idea for a Root/Root conversation.


End file.
